


Constellations

by daisybrien



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Holding Hands, Mutual Pining, Pining, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 01:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4647597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisybrien/pseuds/daisybrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's mankind's primal yearning to touch the stars, discover the universe in all it's infinite glory; he sees the most beautiful parts of the world in her, his need for it tearing him apart, and he is only comforted by the knowledge that he's not alone in his longing for the unattainable. </p>
<p>(PetruoWeek 2015)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constellations

Evening seems to dawn on their expedition early that day, the orange of sunset nothing but a distant glimpse before the night presses around them. The world in the moment decided to give them the smallest of reprieves, one that was well deserved, the air blowing cool breezes over them and the sky clear but for the few bumbling clouds that drift by. Stars dapple the sheet of black that blankets the sky above them, like pinholes in fabric, the moon hanging in the sky like the precious gem of a pendant laying on the curve of a woman’s breast. The silence is punctuated by the coos of birds, ears tuned to the evening song of owls, each rustle of leaves nothing more than a soft shift, no rumblings or snapping branches large enough to be a menace.

Even with the bright pin dots above them, their moon a glowing orb, darkness hugs them like a stifling friend. It does not bring with it the hauntings of ghost stories or fairy tales that haunt their children in the night, rather welcomes them with gentle arms, a solace to hide from whatever creatures would hunt them in the day; there are much bigger monsters to fear in daylight.

They had settled into the trees to rest for the night, their footing slippery and unsure over the rickety bark in the darkness, huddling together and leaning on each other for support, using each other’s bodies as a sense of direction and reassurance like any of them would. Auruo sits himself by the end of one, loosening the cravat itching against his sweaty skin, his aching feet tingling as they dangle over the edge. He sits their in bitter thought, picking at the callouses that blemish his already wrinkling hands. Like the night, the day that had preceded it had been clear and perfect, sun scorching dry earth, the sky a dome painted solid blue. Smith must have thought it to be perfect as well, pushing their mission up by a few days to take advantage of the fortunate weather’s visibility, pulling him away from the little time he could muster with his family. He wants to cuss him out, almost mumbles it under his breath before he is yanked out of his reverie by a singsong voice above him.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

His head snaps up, craning behind him to find the source of the sound. Petra stands behind him, her nose turned up to the sky, her mouth slightly parted in awe as her wide eyes drink in the sky peeking through the canopy of leaves above. The gleam of the stars etch the soft edges of her face, glinting off her smooth hair and making her iris light up like golden honey under a summer afternoon sun. Her entirety seems to glow in front of him, ethereal and godlike as she towers above him, and it takes him a few shakes of the head to plant his feet back in reality, to see her as the wonderful and rather small women that she is, thanking whatever god existed for the mercy they gave him to see her whole after the chaos of the day.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice cracking around the word. He clears his throat, cheeks burning in his devastation. He gnaws on the gooey inside of his cheek, hoping it can be a distraction to his teeth, always so preoccupied with clamping down on his tongue. “It is.”

“We haven’t had a clear night like this in a while,” Petra sighs. She floats down onto the branch beside him, cloak drifting behind her like a parachute, bringing her to a soft landing. She perches herself by the edge, one leg dangling with Auruo’s, the other tucked under her, no doubt smudging her backside with dirt. She leans back, stretching her face up towards the dotted sky, closing her eyes as she breathes in the fresh air beyond the Walls. Auruo feels his ears grow hot; his hand is inches from her own. “And it’s so rare to get to witness it on our expeditions. It’s nice to actually find some peace out here.”

“I don’t think the reason we come out here is to find peace,” Auruo says.

“That doesn’t mean we should work ourselves ragged,” Petra says. She turns her head to him, eyes wide, the shadow of a smile gracing her lips. “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the time to enjoy the small things. I think the fact that we find it so difficult to find pleasure in such a tired world gives us more reason to seek it.”

“It’s too bad we entered a line of work that promises nothing good,” Auruo snorts, one hand moving up to press the soft, loose skin of his face. The thought of it looking back at him makes his stomach grow tight, his reflection in the mirror always making him frown, further deepening the wrinkles that prematurely age what should be a young, radiant face. The trials of battle had wrought its worst onto him; he was barely a man and yet haggardness had sunk its story into him in the form of lines across his face, made him look like he had seen double the years his body had lived. He doesn’t even think he’ll live long enough to be the age he looks now.

Petra’s words snap him out of his nervous reverie. “I guess that just means we should try to salvage even the smallest of things,” she says, her lips quirking up in a smirk. She turns her face back to the sky, letting the moonlight kiss her face.

“We must be really desperate if we are looking for happiness in such tiny things as the stars,” Auruo says.

Her face shifts at his words, brows furrowing, the smallest of lines that he would envy etching in her forehead. She purses her lips, something changing in her eyes, a new spark that the shine of starlight could never have the honour nor capability of ever being responsible for. Her head tilts to the side, smirking as she turns towards him again. He leans forward, feels himself being pulled in by her aura; he can see the thoughts in her, bright behind her pupils, enticing him.

“What if the stars were bigger than they seem?”

“Huh?” he grunts. She nudges him, always annoyed by his brute expression.

“I mean, they seem like nothing but little dots in the sky from where we stand,” she say, “but in reality they’re massive, their size only dwarfed by how far they are from us.”

“I know that,” he scoffs. “Almost everyone knows that. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she says. Her hopeful face falters as she says it, almost upset that he would suggest such a thing, or even believe it. He can’t help but feel a glimmer of joy at her honesty – he hopes it’s honesty - even as he wants to reach out to comfort her. He was the stupid one, and she didn’t have to feel bad for the thought crossing her mind. But her smile is back as quickly as it left her, sarcasm etched in the curve of her lips. “A pain in my ass, definitely, but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid.”

He huffs indignantly at the statement, watching her as her body starts to rock with laughter, secretly enjoying the musical lilt of her voice, so different from his own hoarse, blunted speech. His stomach twists when she almost slips, hand jolting out at the though of her plummeting to the earth below, the two finally sobering.

“Really though,” she continues, the faintest of giggles still bubbling up in her throat. “I don’t think most of us understand how much we underestimate the possibility of how large our universe actually is.”

“So tell me then,” Auruo says, leaning in, a teasing smirk on his face. “Where did you get this amazing idea from?”

“Well,” she continues, “I was talking to Hange-“

“Of course you were,” he interrupts, the words drawn out. He laughs to himself when he sees her face scrunch up in distaste, hearing her grunt in annoyance. “The woman is an entire bundle of crazy, I don’t know how you can be around her without being unsettled by it.”

“That bundle of crazy is half the reason we are surviving out here,” she says. “The poor thing works herself ragged, it wouldn’t hurt you to share a cup of tea with her once and a while. It’s great to make conversation with her, you would be amazed by the ideas she has floating around in that mind of hers.”

“I thought her job was to help us figure out what these things are.” One arm gestures to the expanse in front of him, below him. Their eyes survey the darkness, starting to grow needlessly wary of every crackle of leaves or shriek of an animal, the larger dangers of the day hidden in the shade of the night and shrubbery. “Not map out star charts we can’t even use.”

“Well, life can’t be all titans and tragedy, now can it,” Petra says. “Remember, finding the little things in life?”

“I’m wondering how you two were able to find the strangest of things possible.”

“I wonder the same thing,” Petra says, her voice almost wistful. “You know how she is, hoarding so many books and papers you would think she had grabbed them from thin air. 

“I had found her with all these encyclopedias around her,” Petra continues, her eyes staring into the forest with a far off look. She opens her hands in front of her like a book, as if the words had been printed across them in some invisible ink that he couldn’t see, voice distant as she imagines it in front of her, a nostalgic amazement coming over her as she recounts the memory. “They had all these maps of where and when the stars appear in the sky. All connected by how ancient civilizations connected them, the myths corresponding to each cluster. Their imagination must have been vast

“She even had books on completely different worlds.” She finally snaps her head up, looking up into the sky as if they were right there in front of her. “Massive worlds of different colours, some with glittering rings around them-“

“Rings?” 

“I know,” she says, nodding as if to reassure him of his right to be baffled by the thought. “Rings made of rock and rubble. 

“And the stars,” she breathes. “Massive balls of heat and light so big that we can’t even imagine their sheer size, big enough to make our own world look like nothing more than a speck of dust, but all with so much immeasurable space between us that they’re nothing more but little pinpricks in the sky for us to trace out into cute little constellations that pathetically underestimate the vastness and wonder of it all, all because of our own human ego’s need to feel like the biggest things in the universe.”

“You sound like you’re quoting her, now,” Auruo says.

“I am,” Petra laughs. Her hands flop to her thighs, and she shakes her head, almost as though she were dumbfounded by her own amazement and belief. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

“You can’t know that it is,” Auruo ponders. “Anyone can make up some theory of how big the universe is, doesn’t mean they can prove it.”

“Doesn’t mean we can disprove it.” She makes sense, the only thing spurring him on is his own want for banter. He pulls his cloak farther around him, trying to disguise his shaking nerves and frivolity as simple shivers from the cold.

“Where the hell would you guys find these books in the first place?” Auruo asks incredulously. “And how do you know you can trust them?”

“We don’t,” she shrugs, “but the authors seem so certain, so sure. They had all the solutions for solving these mysteries, were able to see far enough in the night sky to know these things existed.”

“Then why can’t we?”

“All of it’s been lost,” she sighs. “All the technology gone. No one today has even built anything close to finding the same things that those in the past did. The books were so old and dusty; Hange had only found them in the depths of some old library in the outskirts of Rose she had snuck into. Their pages were all ripped and smudged. She thinks that they might have been hidden deliberately.”

“Why would anyone want to hide them?” he asks absently; it’s simply something to fill the silence, move the conversation forward so he won’t have to think of the answer himself, not because he didn’t know it, but because of the implications it will bring, the stifling of their freedom.

“Same reason why they keep trying to defund us,” Petra says. “Same reason they don’t want us coming out here.” It’s something that he doesn’t need to hear, a reality he doesn’t want to be reminded of; as much as he tries to ignore it, it is their own, and one they’ve had to fight for with their lives. 

“It’s not like it would be possible for people to explore outside of this earth,” he says. “We can barely leave the Walls.”

“That’s how they want you to feel,” she quips, “they want you to accept that you’re caged, and to make you believe you can’t to anything about it. You shouldn’t let them take the world away from you so easily.”

“What if I’m sick of seeing the world?” he asks. The words are stammered on a cool breath, each word disjointed as if heavy with his unsaid thoughts. It’s not the whole truth; the world was exactly what they are trying to earn, what they needed to claim back as their own, mostly out of their own need to survive while preoccupied by their human ego to feel like the biggest things in cognitive reality. They all felt the need to conquer Titans and stars alike, dwarfing their size and importance in what must be a much larger scale of existence that they couldn’t even manage to compete with. It was more the sacrifice that haunted them, the weight of death and failure that made his stomach clench and his body shake with injustice, made him wonder if they were really big enough to master such things, and whether their fight is something worthwhile when there is nothing but pain to reward them, the reminder of the grand scheme of the universe and their relative unimportance to it literally hanging over their heads.

“You haven’t seen over the horizon yet,” Petra laughs. “Let alone see beyond the stars. You can’t get sick of something you’ve never seen.” 

She is telling the truth as well, and it makes him blurt out his. “It’s a shame we have to sacrifice so much just to get a glimpse of it.”

“It’s disgusting that it’s kept from us like this,” she sighs, eyes piercing through the curtain of blackness hidden in the pockets between leaves. “It’s worse knowing so many people deny our chance to even try to take discovery back. I don’t understand how they can deny their own yearning for the world.”

“They’re all the greedy bastards too,” Auruo sneers. “So preoccupied with counting all their money they’ll leave us to starve until we’re nothing but Titan fodder.”

He hunches over bitterly, thinking of the time he had seen a carriage from Sina go by the road outside his home in the outskirts of Maria, had trailed behind the goblins of his siblings as they raced down the cobblestone streets after it, in awe of its sheer show of luxury. He had only seen the clothes of the people inside, their faces obscured in the shadow of the carriage’s top; their furs and satins no doubt softly sweet to the touch reducing their homemade clothes to dirty rags in their wake, jewelry tracing their necks and wrists shining bright enough to dwarf the twinkle of the night sky. They had stopped only at his mother’s warnings as she hobbled down the street after them, her own worn dress stretched around thick arms and her swollen pregnant belly, and he had led his siblings back to her with the weight of a rock in his stomach and curses clenched between his teeth. He had clicked his teeth at the idea of that kind of wealth since his youth, the riches and luxury some unattainable standard that he found everyone tried to reach, as if deluding themselves that they could possibly reach that tier of livelihood, as if it would be freeing, as if it’s being at the top of the social ladder weren’t the exact thing that was killing them.

The knot in his stomach had left him for a brief respite only when he rode out of the gates of Maria for the first time, stone zipping over his head to reveal an unblemished sky that he could finally see to the horizon. It had been a rare freedom, and for so long he had no thought of the fancy clothes and lavish carriage strutting down his street, only that of the feel of the breeze through his hair, whipping against his face, and the green, open pastures that seemed to never end.

It had been short lived, a new weight pulling him down at the ankles as he dragged his feet through mud and gore and the ashes of the people who had dared to follow him outside the walls, the people who were let off with no proper burial and the shame of angry tongues cursing at them, all etching lines into his face. He was sitting at different tables now, different stale food and different gaunt faces staring at him from across the splintering wood, but with the same gnawing, yearning hunger in his stomach, and the same knowledge that his own table sat in the same desolate state while the rich and powerful ate to their heart’s content without a care for anyone else in the world or the world itself. His only comfort was in knowing that there will be more food for the rest of his siblings with his absence. Not like he ever left the kids hungry at night when there wasn’t enough food, anyway.

That weight settles into him again now, the knowledge that there was nowhere to go, that the wants of the selfish are going to overshadow the needs of humanity, even the unknown of the world pressing down on him, calling his name even as he sits there sullenly, all his energy replacing the will for him to persevere even as its sapped out of him.

“Do you think we’ll eventually grow bored of it?” Auruo is the one to break the silence, the heaviness in the air seeming to grow lighter now that their minds can stay focused again, instead of drifting off into dismal thoughts. “That we’ll find all we want to find or end up tired of looking for it?”

“Are you talking about us as people?” Petra asks. “Or humanity? Because either way we’re probably going to die before it happens.”

Auruo snorts, Petra breathing a laugh along with him. Neither of them think it’s funny.

“I don’t think it’s possible for us,” she continues, voice low. She stares into her knuckles, eyes tired but still gleaming with the same awe, as if the lines in her hands held the same intricacies and infinity as the sky above them. “As individuals, we might grow tired of trying for something that seems unattainable, yes, but it would be going against our desire to discover.”

“You seem to be so sure about that.”

“And you’re not?”

“It’s hard to want something you don’t even know exists yet,” Auruo says.

“Maybe that’s what makes it so important,” she rebuttals, “so characteristic. The fact that we even want to find these things in the first place.”

“Not everyone,” he grumbles. “Not those with massive piles of money.”

“Everyone wants something out of life,” Petra muses. She turns to him in empathy, wide eyes crinkling as the apples of her cheeks grow round with her smirk; it makes his heart leap, almost as if startling him, and he’s forced to stare humbly at the crevices in the bark in the space between their fingers. “But that want for wealth and misdirected ambition is what clouds our human compassion.”

“Compassion doesn’t even cut it close to shit we have to put up with from them,” Auruo mutters under his breath. 

Petra gives a small laugh of understanding, grunting out her own agreement. “There is so much more to the world,” she says, “but we’ve been left so preoccupied with things that don’t even matter, yet end up leaving so many to die sick and hungry.”

“Maybe we should try to drag them out here,” Auruo snorts bitterly. “Then they’ll see the shit we have to put up with while they have us under their snobby noses.”

“You’re not exempt from that,” Petra scolds. 

“You think I’m rich greedy bastard, then?”

“Fuck no,” Petra grunts. “I meant that you’re one of the bastards who hasn’t seen all the shit the world has to offer. We all are.”

“If you’re saying there’s more crap beyond this,” Auruo says, “I don’t want to find it.”

“I’m sure there will be much less of it once we’ve killed all these monsters,” Petra says dryly. “The endless expanse of the universe probably won’t be so persistent in trying to kill us.”

“Endless?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” she shrugs tiredly. “What’s the point in underestimating it? If we’re going to want to search it, might as well give enough to keep us going, and endless expanse we can’t even imagine witnessing in it’s entirety.” Her smile is weary and, still sincere even as it is softened by the weakness of her aching form. He only now notices that the group down the branch had grown much quieter in their shared moment of thought, starts to feel the need for sleep nudging at him irritably, burning behind his eyelids. 

Auruo can only nod in silence, leaving her words to taper off to an awkward end. He doesn’t think he can agree with her fully, the idea of existence so abstract in itself; are they not in it themselves, taking up and witnessing, being a part of its space right now? They were cogs in the machine that made up it’s massive scheme, and no matter how ridiculously minuscule and unimportant they seemed to it they were still there nonetheless. The only thing that made it seem so distant was their conscience, putting them apart from the grand vastness of space as if they could observe it from a distance rather than seeing it as something they were a part of, that reality was not something happening to them but something they were helping to create with every living moment, even for the fleeting blip of time they are in it for. The sky above him was big to him and he would be to a fly, menacing and inspiring as it bears down upon those smaller than it. The enormity of the fields outside the Walls were just as vast to him as the space she insists he his underestimating between him and the stars, and he can witness them both all the same even from the branch that trembles beneath his ass. They are witnesses of it in even the smallest of things, in the dark unknown between the leaves as they shake with the night’s life, in the split second between life and death as they pluck themselves from plummeting into the ground as they grapple with their hooks. 

Even now he is witnessing it, in his own egotistical, pettily human way, frustrating and electric and wracking through him like lightning as he stares down at the bark in between their figures, mere inches from each other but still an infinite hurdle he was too cowardly to leap across. It seems to grow impossibly larger as his fingers crawl forward, physically making the space smaller but making the task all the more daunting. The unending yearning is there, so overwhelmingly there, pulling at him insistently to discover, and he didn’t know whether he was more terrified of it pulling him up to the stars or to the woman by his side who might as well be blinding him like one herself.

He doesn’t agree with her but, for once in his amazingly small life, stays silent, lest he start an argument he may not win or take the leap that he may hopelessly regret. Instead, he just lets the silence wash over them, listening as their squad settles in for the night, the crackle of their fire slowly waning.

“It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow,” he offers.

“Yeah,” Petra replies weakly.

“Maybe we should go rest.”

“Yeah.” Even as she says it, neither of them make a move to get up, both of them left to look up at the sky solemnly.

It happens in an instant, the shock of it settling into Auruo’s mind before he can even register the shuffle of her cloak, the swish of her hair as it drifts in the air. He only feels the bump against his shoulder, an intimidating and oh so sweet warmth that sends his heart racing and his breath shaky like the love struck fool that he is. When he dares to look down, Petra is there, the space gone in an amazing feat, her head mushed against him, staring up at him.

“I think it would be nice to look at the stars a little bit more,” Petra mumbles hesitantly. His eyes must be wide in horror, but hers stay soft and expectant as they look into them, her lips pursed and small, her cheeks flushed red in what he thinks in his boggled mind is unbelievably a blush. “They’re pretty tonight.”

He wants to snort; she can go into a whole inspired spiel about the vastness of existence and time and space to calling it pretty within a minute, from a tormenting distant to a shocking closeness and intimacy that he had to admit was a miracle in it simply existing with him. It’s what makes him finally take the leap, smirking to himself as he lets human yearning take over and fuel his courage, lifting his arm slowly around her shoulder. It hovers for a minute before settling softly onto her own shoulder, his thumb brushing over her shirt, almost grinning giddily as she shuffles in closer.

“Yeah,” he breathes. He takes the final move, slowly bringing his head down to lie on hers, and with that he thinks he could conquer anything, bound through the longest expanse of emptiness the universe has to offer him – he had already done so now - as long as he can stay like this, the smell of her hair in his nose and the warmth of her body snug in his arms. He’s invincible only in his dazed mind, but he lets himself bask in it just for the moment, and even in his tiredness he keeps his aching eyes open, wanting to cherish the moment for as long as he can, hoping to bring just a shred of it into the morning with him. The bravado and strength it gives him now will be more than he will need tomorrow. “They are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Out of all the ships that could have come to slam me in the chest. It had to be this. I'm in hell.
> 
> First Petruo thing can I get a hell yeah?


End file.
